Discard Trope: Frozen Heart, Frozen World

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Created By: ccoa on August 2, 2012 Last Edited By: ccoa on May 1, 2013

Troped

Frozen Heart, Frozen World

An unnaturally long winter that is caused deliberately

Name Space:Main

Page Type:Trope

An unnatural winter that is artificial and intended to last forever, or at least a very long time.

Winter is usually considered the least desirable season: the short days and cold weather can be deadly to humans and animals alike, and no food can be grown. It's also used as a symbol for death, followed by the rebirth of Spring. Perhaps it is for this reason, or perhaps because Evil Is Deathly Cold, causing a winter that never ends is a common goal for a villain.

Of course, not only villains have this in their bag of tricks. Sometimes a character or object causes this just by existing. Such a character is not necessarily a villain, but will often be an antagonist nonetheless. Expect to see a member of The Fair Folk or another creature with Blue and Orange Morality in this role.

In more realistic works, this might be caused by enough material in the atmosphere blocking off the light of the Sun, such as that from nuclear or volcanic fallout or the result of a large enough meteor striking the Earth. In Speculative Fiction, it's more likely to be the work of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens or a wizard.

In The Mighty Thor, the "Cask of Winters"/"Cask of Ancient Winters" is used to create this effect by several enemies of Asgard, especially Malekith "the Accursed". Probably inspired by the Fimbulvetr.

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[[folder:Film - Animated]]

The plot of the Disney film Frozen revolves around the Snow Queen putting a curse on the land which causes endless winter.

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[[folder:Film - Live-Action]]

Mirror, Mirror has winter fall over the land when the evil queen starts to rule. It ends when she is defeated.

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[[folder:Literature]]

The White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia brought a hundred year winter to the titular land, which only ended when Aslan returned. Not only is it an endless winter, but it's specifically a winter without Christmas.

In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, winters can last for decades. There are oral traditions of a winter that lasted for generations, and a myth that, should the Others return and invade Westeros, they will cause a winter that never ends. Word of God is that the unnatural seasons are caused by magic, but it's unclear if it's the Others' magic or something else.

In The Dresden Files, whenever Mab the Queen of Winter Fae stays on the material plane for too long, the winter just seems to drag on forever.

Inverted in The Wheel of Time. The Dark One uses his influence to make it eternal summer in order to burn out the world and kill the plants with heat. To counter this, the main characters seek and eventually find an object that controls the weather and use it to start winter. In order to balance things, they have to make the winter much harsher and longer than usual. Famine becomes a major problem in the series.

In Wintersmith the titular Wintersmith creates an unnaturally long winter (although his opposite number the Summer Lady) would have created an endless summer). Tiffany tries to balance nature again.

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[[folder:Music]]

The music video for Erasure's "Always" features a Kabuki style demon who was intent on creating an eternal winter. Andy Bell portrays the nature god who defeats him.

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[[folder:Myth, Legend, and Oral Tradition]]

In Norse Mythology, the Fimbulvetr or Fimbulwinter is an especially harsh winter that lasts twice as long as usual and signifies the beginning of Ragnarok.

The Hans Christian Anderson fairytale The Snow Queen's titular character is the "queen of snowflakes." She curses the protaganist's hometown to an endless winter.

In Dragon Quest V, the Winter Queen tricks Dwight into taking the Herald of Spring to the Winter Palace, causing an endless winter.

The plot of Fahrenheit takes place against the backdrop of an unnaturally long and harsh winter, which is eventually revealed to be supernatural. Even though the villains didn't cause it, one of them chooses not to stop it in the ending where he wins, destroying humanity.

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[[folder:Western Animation]]

In The Fairly Oddparents TV special "Christmas Everyday!" one of the consequences of Timmy's everyday is Christmas wish is that everyday is a snow day. This made it extremely difficult for him to travel to the north pole to get Santa Claus' help in cancelling the wish.

The Helliconia Trilogy, set on the planet of the same name, involves a world in a highly elliptical orbit around its sun. Its summers last decades, but its winter lasts for over a thousand years. It's so severe that it acts as a de facto Reset Button on the civilization of the planet.

Zig Zagged (maybe) in an episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Midnight Sun." The story takes place on a world where it's getting hotter and hotter because the Earth is getting closer and closer to the sun, which is terrible for the protagonist specifically because she's a painter, and all that heat is ruining her paintings. But it turns out it's All Just A Dream - actually the Earth is getting colder and colder because it's moving away from the sun, and will eventually become an uninhabitable big ball of ice. From the protagonist's POV, this is a Happy Ending.

The plot of Fahrenheit takes place against the backdrop of an unnaturally long and harsh winter, which is eventually revealed to be supernatural. Even though the villains didn't cause it, one of them chooses not to stop it in the ending where he wins, destroying humanity.

(I know it's not done by a specific villain, but it is a portent of evil things to come)

Inverted in The Wheel Of Time. The Dark One uses his influence to make it eternal summer in order to burn out the world and kill the plants with heat. To counter this, the main characters seek and eventually find an object that controls the weather and use it to start winter. In order to balance things, they have to make the winter much harsher and longer than usual. Famine becomes a major problem in the series.

Clear Concise Witty. I'm not really how a name that's more indicative of what the trope is means that we're treating our readers like idiots. Does this have to involve a villain? If so, the names kinda missing a big part of the trope.

No, it does not have to involve a villain necessarily. An antagonist, or just someone who causes it by accident would also fit the trope.

Take a look at the Evil Overlord trope - it's described there as "endless winter", and I doubt anyone who reads that assumes "oh, yeah, winter that never, ever, ever ends" rather than "guy tries to create a winter that never ends, but of course it ends 'cause the hero beats him."

And honestly, we've swung waaaaay too far to the clear side of the scale, at the expense of concise and completely sacrificing witty. Seriously, Villain Induced Endless Winter could be a laconic entry.

(And I am amused at the irony of people trying to throw policy at me.)

Endless Winter is a fine name. I think most of us knew what it was when we clicked on it. no need to perpetuate the increasingly awkward tvtropes jargon of too many adjectives and adverbs, bad grammar, snowclones, and adding 'ploy' and 'gambit' or 'x of y' to everything.

In The Fairly Oddparents tv special "Christmas Everyday!" one of the consequences of Timmy's everyday is Christmas wish is that everyday is a snow day. This made it extremely difficult for him to travel to the north pole to get Santa Claus' help in cancelling the wish.

My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 2 E 13 Hearths Warming Eve revolves around this. Evil Windigoes are the cause, attracted by the different species' distrust and discontent toward each other. It causes famines so awful that the leaders of each tribe, with their respective assistants, migrate to a new land - but the Windigoes just follow them there, too. It's finally stopped when the three assistants, their bossy, hateful leaders encased in ice, amicably make amends.

There are some replies that indicate people think it's confusing and/or not narrow enough. I, personally, think it'll be fine - a wick check shows that closely related trope The Night That Never Ends does not have large amounts of misuse, and its name has the same noted problems as this name.

It's not out of the running, just has objections. We may need a crowner here, as neglected as they are in YKTTW.

"Phil Connors was trapped in his Groundhog Day Loop for 10,000 years" is an anecdote about an early draft of the script, and somewhat silly; the director later said "10 years" (on the DVD commentary), which is way too short a time. It is obviously of unspecified duration. That shouldn't be just tossed out as Word Of God.

Also if this is "inflicted by a villain" then that isn't an example anyway.

In the Fritz Leiber short story "A Pail of Air", the Earth is ripped away from the Sun by a passing black hole. As a result of losing the heat of the Sun the Earth has gotten so cold that the atmosphere has frozen.

Another vote for Endless Winter, although it may get some mild misuse for the purely astronomical version found in Science Fiction. Still, some people will misuse/shoehorn any trope no matter what it's called. :)

In John C Wright's Count To A Trillion, Menelaus's first spring is when he is six. The younger characters regard it as this. The older ones hush them: the Japanese created it deliberately, in order to fight a disease, and if they hadn't, mankind might have gone extinct.

Those are worse by far than Endless Winter I think; a little bit of clarity is gained by sacrificing a lot of concision (and a bit of wit, just EW sounds good). The fact that it's intentional doesn't have to be part of its name. They are in descending order of importance but they are all important: clear, concise, witty.

If the name is changed it should be to something different and good, not the same but worse. And not going to use EW because of a trope that doesn't exist? Maybe that one should have a different name...

I find "Just by existing" and "Deliberate" almost mutually exclusive (its not really fare to demand that it give up its life to stop it if it is alive). If it is a creature and it does this "just by existing", it probably overlaps with Walking Wasteland. Although I can see it as deliberate if the character/item in question is was intentionally made with or given this involuntary ability (like an Iceheart, Major found in the Dungeons And Dragons book It's Cold Outside).

speaking of which

There is an item you can make called "Iceheart, Major" that creates winter. Thus, the mere presence of a major iceheart generates a 15-mile-radius zone of eternal winter; the majority of frostfell regions that appear in temperate or tropical climates are the result of the introduction of a major iceheart into the region.

As noted in the trope, creatures that cause winter by existing are usually treated as antagonists, if not outright villains, by works. I'm having trouble thinking of one that isn't the Snow Queen archetype.

Dawn Of War II: Chaos Rising stated that before the Warp Storms claimed planet Aurelia, it was a major commerce hub and home to a monastery to the Blood Ravens. When it finally returned to real-space after millenia in the Warp, it has since turned into a wintry wasteland thanks to the ruinous powers in the Warp.

I don't think Endless Winter is a good name, since it is bound to end some time, usually as a happy ending. I think Unnatural Invasive Winter is better. Unnatural says it's not just a season, it's caused by someone or something that wasn't there yesterday. Invasive says it starts where there was a warmer climate before.

The heartless wizard Nekron in Ralph Bakshi's Fire And Ice is able to expand his ice palace world into the tropics. His glacier stops advancing only when Nekron tires.

Western Animation

The Famous Studios cartoon Suddenly It's Spring from 28 April 1944 features Raggedy Ann pleading with Old Man Winter to relent, so that the sun may shine upon her owner, who lies abed dying from lack of sunlight.

The Ice Vikings that invade Acmetropolis, home to the Loonatics Unleashed, are armed with "hammers of frost" and know to attack the power station to best plunge that world into a new Ice Age.

It's been well over two months since Cocoa (OP) has been involved in this. I'd say it's Up For Grabs. If you plan on 'hitting the launch button' I hope you're going to make wicks for it to link to it too.

Like I said, I do like the idea of a cold-hearted person causing ongoing winter but it looks like that would be a sub-trope. Would that be good for me or someone to make?

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